Technologies that we consider commonplace today, like instant replay and a first-of-its-kind refrigeration mechanism for the speed-skating oval, were pioneered or developed at those games. Also, this was the first time the Olympics were televised live nationwide. CBS bought the exclusive rights for $50,000, and Walter Cronkite reported live throughout the event.

Pageantry chair Walt Disney at the 1960 Olympics. (Courtesy Bill Briner)

Walt Disney himself was the pageantry chair. The entertainment king and winter sports enthusiast turned the event into a theatrical extravaganza worthy of TV.

Disney’s team booked choirs and bands to play in Olympic Village and created giant, white statues of athletes that looked like they were carved out of ice (though in reality they were fashioned from wire and papier-mâché). At various points they released fireworks, balloons and even pigeons into the sky.

Eddy Ancinas said the event took on an almost supernatural quality under Disney’s direction, especially after a heavy snowstorm delayed the start of the opening ceremony.

One of the massive athlete sculptures created by Walt Disney’s team for the 1960 Olympics. (Courtesy Bill Briner)

“The blizzard suddenly ended, the sun came out and the sky was blue,” she said. “It was kind of like maybe God had a hand in this or something.”

Myth-making vs. lost reality

The weather wasn’t the only element to give the 1960 Olympics an almost mythological aura. Another is the U.S. men’s ice hockey team’s triumph against the fearsome Soviets — a big deal during the Cold War.

Historic ice hockey game between the U.S. and Soviet Union at the 1960 Olympics. The U.S. won 3-2. (Wikimedia Commons)

And then there’s the narrative about how the games even made it to an obscure corner (at the time) of the Sierra Nevada in the first place.

“It’s a David and Goliath story,” said Eddy, who wrote a 2019 book about the region’s ski history. “There was nothing there, so they had a clean slate. To make that into an Olympic site was quite a feat.”

But what tends to get lost in accounts of the 1960 Olympic Games is the fact that they took place on unceded Indigenous lands — stolen land that had belonged to Native people for thousands of years.

“People view this land as pristine and untouched,” said Herman Fillmore, culture and language resources director for the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California. “But this land was actually shaped by Indigenous peoples and our cultures.”

At the time of the Olympics, Fillmore said his tribe was in the middle of a decades-long lawsuit against the federal government for the theft of roughly 6 million acres of Washoe lands, including the area where the Olympics were held. The Washoe had never formally entered into a treaty nor received compensation for land occupied by the United States.

“While Washoe people were undergoing a court case to gain any sort of restitution for the taking of our land, we coincidentally have the 1960 Olympics, where other nations are freely welcome to Washoe homelands, a place that Washoe people were no longer allowed to be,” Fillmore said.

Washoe tribespeople in their ancestral lands in the valley of Lake Tahoe. (Library of Congress)

Both the tribe and local historians say the organizers of the Olympic Games did not consult Washoe people about their plans.

To make matters worse, owners named the resort that hosted the games Squaw Valley, a racist and misogynistic term used for Indigenous women. European settlers had given the land that name in the mid-19th century.

The resort kept the name until September 2021, when management rebranded it Palisades Tahoe. Tribal members had been asking for the derogatory name to be removed for years.

“The renaming of Palisades was long overdue,” said Fillmore.

The 1960 Olympic story

Most historical accounts of the Tahoe Olympics begin with a picture of a sparkling white landscape, practically untouched by human hands.

“There was almost nothing here: one lift, two rope tows, a lodge and a dirt road leading to it off the highway. And there were only two year-round families that lived in the valley itself,” said David Antonucci, an avid cross-country skier, long-time Tahoe resident and author of the book “Snowball’s Chance: The Story of the 1960 Olympic Winter Games.”

The Tahoe Olympic story began in the waning days of 1954.

“Alex Cushing, who is a co-founder of what was then known as the Squaw Valley ski area, was reading the paper,” said Antonucci. “And he saw that the city of Reno was submitting a bid to host the 1960 Winter Olympics.”

That was all it took to give Cushing the improbable idea of pitching his own little ski resort as a contender for the privilege of hosting the 1960 Olympics, said Antonucci.

“He thought, ‘Heck, Squaw Valley is a better mountain. I’ve got better conditions here. I wonder if I could submit a bid and just get some publicity for it?'”

Cushing was a Harvard-educated lawyer with many rich and powerful friends. He hurriedly put together a proposal, got financial backing from the California state Legislature, and traveled to New York to pitch the U.S. Olympic Committee.

“And much to the surprise of everybody, the U.S. Olympic Committee decided to nominate Squaw Valley to host the 1960 Winter Olympics,” Antonucci said.

A view of the opening ceremonies at the 1960 Olympics. (Courtesy Bill Briner)

But Cushing still had to go to Paris and convince the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that Tahoe should host the Games. Even though by this point he had the support of both the state of California and the U.S. federal government, his chances of winning looked pretty slim.

“He’s being told, ‘Forget it. You’ve got no chance. You’re just wasting your time,'” said Antonucci. “People in the Olympic orbit said, ‘Innsbruck, Austria, has it tied up.'”

But Cushing and his team didn’t give up. They started working their contacts around the globe. The lobbying effort included the then-unorthodox step of printing their proposal in Spanish — not just the official Olympic languages of English and French.

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